Scottish Government taken to court over prawn trawling

Fish Legal was in court on 21 July challenging a decision by the Scottish Government to refuse to sanction an inshore fisheries pilot designed to assess the comparative economic and environmental performance of fishing with low impact static gear compared with trawled fishing gear.

There has been increasing concern that inshore trawlers which target Nephrops, a large prawn, have a very high level of bycatch of commercial fish species and that this has contributed to the collapse of inshore fish populations on the west coast of Scotland over the last 30 years.

The pilot, which was planned for the Inner Sound of Skye, was an opportunity to see whether a policy to restrict the use of mobile or trawled gear in favour of static creel fishing would lead to a recovery of the inshore fishery.

Judgment on permission in the case was reserved until a later date.